StartMail's pledge to protect you from AI
https://www.startmail.com/private-from-ai
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As tech products rush to integrate “AI” into their products and platforms, StartMail would like to clarify our position and let our users know how we plan to uphold our privacy pledge in this new era of technology.
At a time when many of the world’s most powerful companies are expanding the use of unregulated AI technology in their quest to “move fast and break things,” StartMail stands apart. Unlike Yahoo, Gmail and others that now allow AI to read and process their users’ private messages, we pledge to protect our users’ email privacy from AI’s voracious appetite for data.
While it is true that AI models have made startling and impressive breakthroughs in recent years, the headlines show just how unreliable and dangerous these tools actually are. AI chatbots confidently spew forth “hallucinations,” expose sensitive and private data in public spaces, have shown a willingness to blackmail users, engage in seductive conversations with children, induce psychosis, and even drive users to self harm and suicide—all without being programmed to do so.
The societal downsides are immense. AI models are being used to flood the Internet with low effort, derivative slop and harming users’ ability to think critically. It is already automating vast numbers of jobs out of existence. Data centers like the ones being built by xAI and Meta are setting new records for resource consumption, noise pollution and harm to the communities that surround them.
Even AI’s developers and greatest cheerleaders—the very minds who helped develop these tools—are cautioning they could bring about apocalyptic consequences. Yet despite these dangers and risks, our competitors are making every effort to force AI into their products, all in the name of profit. This means communication privacy, one of the hallmarks of a free society, is more at risk than ever before.
That is why StartMail pledges to keep your email private from AI.
While much of the tech world is focused on AI, StartMail remains committed to our core mission: maintaining the privacy of your data. StartMail will never jeopardize your safety or security with the latest AI fad, and our state-of-the art encryption and data handling practices will now shield your email from AI, the same way we have long protected you from hackers, snoops, and government.
StartMail costs $5 a month. Why pay for email?
Email that is just handed to you at no cost has major hidden strings attached. Email is not like sunlight or air, it can't be produced or distributed for free. Somebody has to build it, maintain it, put it on the Internet and pay the electrical bills to keep it running.
Email costs a few cents a day per account, no matter who is paying for it. It has to get that money from somewhere. Your choice is whether to let someone else pay those costs so they can own your email account and vacuum up information and control over you, or whether YOU pay to own the account yourself, and keep everything in it under your complete control.
What value of "free gift " would you accept to participate in a lifelong data collection project where you agree to let marketers install a camera in your inbox, read your bank balance and all your bills, know your travel plans, read your love letters and birthday greetings, see what you buy, what you pay on utilities, who your friends and family are, where your kids go to school, what their grades are, what you say to your lawyer and accountant, what you buy online, and a thousand other things -- and then let a superhuman intelligence crunch that gigantic, intimate portrait of you into an encyclopedic data profile you could never change or delete?
If they offered to shave 16¢ a day off your utilities and expenses, would you say "Heck yeah! It's totally worth it - sign me up!"Put that way, which is the truth, you'd have to be crazy to say yes. But millions of people have been tricked into doing just that. Accepting a "gift" whose actual value is just pennies, in exchange for allowing strangers to collect almost painfully intimate and private information about them when they think no one's looking. We created StartMail to give you a way out of that devil's bargain, so you can cut out the middle man and reject his pennies, and let you pay those pennies yourself so YOU can own your email account, where no one can read over your shoulder ever again. Don't let bad guys trick you into trading your safety, security, privacy, and peace of mind to get something you can buy so cheaply for yourself.